Action Research Template

The following template may be used for your action research:

Context of the Problem

The discipline in the L2 classroom using a wiki The English classes in public primary schools in most cases are not successful for many reasons. The most common reasons are the lack of motivation which involves many aspects and the lack of teacher´s preparation in group management, due to some teachers don´t apply the appropriate strategies to work with children. This research is made with the objective of knowing if the use of technology could be good strategy which helps students from a primary school to be more interested in their English classes. The group studied presents a bad behavior during their English classes (talking out of time, studying without a plan, not listening to the teacher, doing other things during the lesson, fighting with friends, cheating, eating something during the class, coming late to class, not respecting to the teacher, taking and using friend's equipment without permission and despising and excluding friends, among others). For that reason this research pretends to find the strategy in which students show more interest and they can improve in the language. In this research a wiki is going to be applied in order for students the English classes will be more attractive and they enjoy studying English , in addition to develop their writing skills.

During the research the researcher wants to answer the following questions: How a wiki help students to be interested in the English class? What are the benefits of using a wiki in the L2 classroom?

The subject of study for this research is a group of children around 12 years old of sixth grade from a public primary school, this group is going to be studied in order to apply a wiki in their English classes because they misbehave during them and they don´t show interest in it. The wiki is going to be put in practice during their writing practices. In these kinds of activities the way in which students write (grammatical rules, cohesion, punctuation, and all grammatical aspects) is not going to be the main purpose, the researcher is going to focus her attention in the interest that students show during the activities. In the wiki students are going to write about some topics that they like in order to increase their curiosity and they enjoy working with this technology.

Theoretical framework

Motivation plays an important role in the learning and teaching process. The term of motivation can be difficult to define because many people see it in different perspectives. Ryan and Deci’s (2000) “intrinsic motivation refers to perform an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequences” (as cited in Demir , 2011, p. 1399). Students that are intrinsically motivated do the activities voluntarily, they don´t need to other stimulus. On the other hand, Deci et al(1991), Ryan & Connell,1989) “extrinsic motivation requires an instrumentality between the activity and some separable consequences such as tangible or verbal rewards, so satisfaction comes not from the activity itself but rather from the extrinsic consequences to which the activity leads”(as cited in Demir , 2011, p 1399). That means that students need from the teacher to feel attracted to learn the second language. The teacher needs to look for the way in which students want to participate and they feel interested in the class.

The discipline is one of the main aspects to improve learning in a classroom. The most common students ‘misbehavior in a classroom are the talking out time, the lack of participation in the class and the lack of interest in the class. In most cases to control the bad behavior in public schools result difficult for many causes, Koenig, L. (2008), states that the breakup of their families cause the students’ bad behavior because most of them don´t know to follow rules and respect to the others due to the situation in which they live. On the hand, the lack of preparation in classroom management and as consequence of it the lack of teachers ‘strategies to control the discipline .

The use of technology has been a good tool for students to be motivated to learn and for teachers to control the discipline in the classroom. Through the time technologies have been an important tool in the academic field. The use of wikis, blogs or any other kind of technology in L2 classrooms have resulted very practical for teachers and students. According to Kavaliauskiené, Galina & Anusiené, Lilija, (2010) “the word "Wiki" is of a Hawaiian origin and means "quick". A wiki is a web page that can be viewed and modified by anybody online. In other words, any person can change its content. Wikis permit group collaboration across the Internet and provide users with both author and editor functions" (pag 53). In other words in a wiki students can share all their writing thoughts and this place can be modified by all its users.

Method and Materials

A qualitative method was chosen to explore how a wiki helps students from a primary school to feel more interested and to improve in their English classes.

The subject of study is a group of 20 students (15 boys and 5 girls) around 12 years old from sixth grade of a public primary school from Aguascalientes. This group was selected by their bad behavior and their lack of interest that they present during their English classes. A questionnaire is going to be applied to students at the end of the intervention. The questions that students are going to answer are close and open questions. This is because the students are from sixth grade of primary school and to avoid some confusion in the questions. The questionnaire is going to have 9 questions in order for students do not feel pressured when they answer them. The questions in the questionnaire were designed in a simple way, easy to understand for them. Also the questions are written in Spanish for a student’s ‘comprehension because their level of English.

Procedure

The teacher is going to work in three classes using a wiki, based on the topics of students´ interest linked with the topic required by the program (Simple Present). The teacher is going to ask students to write some simple sentences about what they like to do in their free time; this is going to be individually with the objective that all students write something about them, this activity is going to be in their notebooks and they are going to write it on the wiki page. After that, teacher is going to form teams of three people to encourage students’ group collaboration and to do more dynamic the activity, she is going to ask them to review their classmates work and finally comment something in the work (write some notes in the wiki).

While students work, the teacher is going to do an observation to see if students show enthusiasm in the class using the wiki or they act in the same way as in other classes in which they didn´t use technology . In the second class students are going to make changes in their sentences taking into consideration the comments that their classmates did. Then the teacher is going to ask students to add time to all the activities they do and the days like and a schedule. When students finish the activities they have to comment to the whole group some of their activities in a loud voice.

In the last class the teacher is going to give a model in which they are going to link all the sentences and share their ideas with their classmates ( with their teams) and read them in a loud voice.

A questionnaire is going to be applied at the end of the activities planned by the teacher, with the objective of knowing what if  they liked and what they don´t like about work with a wiki and why.  Also at the end the teacher is going to apply some interviews, she is going to work with a focus group to know how they felt.

Results and Data Analysis

Present the findings of the investigation using graphs, tables, etc.

Discussion

Discuss your results in terms of how they answer your research question(s) or hypothesis. Did your intervention work? What recommendations can you offer? How might others extend this research? Are there any limitations?

References

Demir, k. (2011). Teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as predictors of student engagement. e-journal of new world sciences academy, 6(2), 1397-1402

Kavaliauskiené, G., & Anusiené L.(2010). Learners' attitudes to ESP writing: weblogs or wikis?. Coactivity/Santalka, 18(4),22-43

Koenig, L. (2008). Smart discipline for the classroom United States of America: Corwin press.

Schedule

The activities are going to be applied on Monday October 31st, Tuesday November 1st, and Tuesday November 3rd.

Feedback

• This is just a reminder to refer to this video before emailing me your final draft. If you have any questions about APA, come by my office.--Bnleez 21:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
• Tere, see Adriana's research page and change your headings accordingly. If you aren't sure how to create the heading structure, see me. Keep adding to your research as you process over the next few weeks. --Bnleez 14:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

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Feedback

• Please add your schedule for conducting your action research for this semester. --Bnleez 17:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)